End game

End game

by digby

God John Boehner is slimy pile of offal. I feel some real sympathy for the President having to negotiate with this sanctimonious jerk. Yuck.

However, I think he may be singing to his choir here. When you are trying to prove to your caucus that you did absolutely everything you possibly could to get them everything they demanded, you go to the wire fighting every step of the way. I suspect Boehner needs to walk right up to the line. The President did a little of that too with his righteous indignation on behalf of the poor and downtrodden in his press conference. I know I appreciated it.

Keep this Paul Ryan comment in mind as we watch this unfold over the week-end:

My own judgment, based upon all the various conversations that are occurring, are that we will find a way to deal with this issue," Ryan said. And I think there are constructive conversations that are occurring -- both sides of the rotunda, both sides of Pennsylvania Avenue. And I do believe at the end of the day cooler heads are going to prevail."

He added, "The Biden talks, I thought, were probably the most productive exercise of all these exercises that have been going on around here. That put actual cuts, well, that's a longer story but because of the insistence for tax increases. But I still believe that those talks were producing some results on spending cuts."

Asked why he and the Republican caucus wouldn't want to pocket the spending cuts the president has already offered -- and work out the details later -- he said:

"That's what I want to do. I want to grab the spending cuts we can... I think that's what we're going to do at the end of the day here... I think that's what we should do is grab the kind of spending cuts we can right now."

He went on to say: "Spending cuts in the so-called Gang of Six plan are extremely vague. They're sort of a promise that Senate Democrats will pass spending cuts later where there are no details and specificity. I've seen that game played around here before. So I want to get spending cuts under control. The other thing is with the Gang of Six - it's saying we're going to lower tax rates, which there's becoming a bipartisan consensus to that -- which I'm really encouraged about -- but keep the loopholes and raise revenues. These are conflicting mandates. They don't add up."

Asked about the McConnell-Reid negotiations, Ryan said:

"Since we're in the middle of these conversations right now, I just don't think it's in our interest to sort of speculate what our fallback plan is going to be. No offense. I just don't think it's good to negotiate through the media, as we're trying to get significant spending cuts to deal with this issue. There are lots of different fallback plans that are being offered out there. I assume that there will be a fallback plan in place. What that's going to be or what we want to agree to, it's just not in our interest to say that right now. But I do believe that we will have cooler heads prevail and prevent a default from happening."

I'm fairly sure Paul Ryan has some clout with the fiscal nutballs faction. And the White House has said the offers are still on the table.


Also this:

SEN. MITCH MCCONNELL, R-KY., MINORITY LEADER: Default is no better idea today than when Newt Gingrich tried it in 1995, is -- it destroys your brand and would give the president an opportunity to blame Republicans for a bad economy.

Look, he owns the economy. He’s been in office almost three years now. And we refuse to let him entice us in to co-ownership of a bad economy.

Boehner remembers that too --- and so does Cantor.

I'm still rooting for a clean debt ceiling vote, and in his press conference the President finally relinquished his demand that they do something "big", so it's not out of the question. But if I had to guess they'll get a deal of some sort over the week-end. And if we're lucky it will be something small and fairly insignificant and we live to fight another day.

And there will be another fight on this another day.

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